GALWAY CITY

PLEASE VISIT

Monday, September 5, 2016

Just upstream of the Corrib Rowing & Yacht Club clubhouse are the remains of the viaduct that carried the Galway to Clifden Railway over the Corrib.

The Galway to Clifden railway line opened on July 1st 1895. Built by Midland Great Western Railway Company (MGWR), the line had stations at Moycullen, Oughterard, Maam Cross, Recess and Ballynahinch.

It consisted of 30 bridges including a steel viaduct over the River Corrib in Galway.
The last service departed from Clifden in April 1935.
Although the Corrib is one of Ireland's shortest rivers, it has a mean long-term flow rate of 104.8 m3/s, making it Ireland's second-largest river (by flow), only surpassed by the River Shannon.

The Abbey of St Francis was built in 1836 and dedicated to ‘The Immaculate Conception’ - the first church in Ireland to bear this title.

The Abbey was founded in 1296 on St. Stephen’s Island where the present courthouse is situated.

In 1660 a church was erected on the present site of the Abbey, and a Novitiate in 1774. In 1781 the church was rebuilt and around 1836 the present church was opened. The present friary was built or rebuilt in 1820, and renovated in 1970s. The Abbey became the first Franciscan parish in modern Ireland in 1971.

To me this looks like a very large monstrance, ostensorium (or an ostensory) … the vessel used in Roman Catholic, Old Catholic and Anglican churches for the more convenient exhibition of some object of piety, such as the consecrated Eucharistic host during Eucharistic adoration or Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. It is also used as reliquary monstrance for the public display of relics of some saints.

Some accounts describe this metal sculpture by John Coll as depicting a seagull, a ship and the sun. The sun may be correct but it is definitely not a seagull [my best guess is that it is a cormorant] and I am not sure that a Galway Hooker is classified as a ship.

John Coll, originally from Taylor’s Hill Galway and now living in Dublin. After an initial career as a marine biologist John Coll turned to his passion for making sculpture fulltime 30 years ago. Since then he has become one of the best known figurative sculptors with many public works such as the monument to Patrick Kavanagh on the Grand Canal at Baggot Street, Dublin and his celebration in bronze of Brendan Behan on the Royal Canal in Drumcrondra, Dublin. Other large-scale works include a life-size portrait of the racehorse "Bobbyjo" and a 4-meter monument to Countess Markievicz at Rathcormac, Co Sligo. His most recent commission is a 4.5-meter sculpture of the Galway footballer legend Enda Colleran for his hometown of Moylough, Co Galway.

I was wandering at random around Galway city when I came across this ‘holy well’. St Augustine’s Holy Well is located on the water’s edge of Lough Atalia on the eastern edge of Galway city. This is the first time that I have seen a well in a tidal zone.

This well was one of a set of three holy wells but now it is one of only two surviving holy wells in the vicinity of Galway and has been revered by generations of locals for its healing power, particularly for those with eye problems.
In 2000 the Trust's Community Employment scheme completed a major renovation of the location which involved improving access to the well, the erection of a retaining stone wall and the installation of a bench and commemorative plaque on site. A stone cross was also commissioned by the Trust to replace the concrete one which previously identified the site.

I have seen this described as ‘Oscar Wilde And Someone Else’ but this installation is much more interesting and complicated than that.

In my photographs [viewing from the front] the Irish writer Oscar Wilde is to the left and the Estonian writer Eduard Wilde is to the right. They appear to be conversing, but the two men are not related and never met.

The Eduard Wilde statue was presented to Galway when Estonia joined the EU in 2004. The sculpture is located in front of a Lazlo Jewellers shop in William Street.
There is an exact copy of the sculpture in Tartu in Estonian.

The sculpture in front of Café Wilde (sculptor T Kirsipuu, 1999) is a fun speculation about literary history. Irish writer Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), who was born in Ireland, and Estonian writer Eduard Vilde (1856-1933), both of the same generation, sit on a bench together. Sculptor Tiiu Kirsipuu, who modelled the writers according to photos, has noted that the year she had in mind when she created the sculpture was 1890, when the two Wildes could have met for a witty chat.

About Me

Way back in the early days of home computing two Commodore enthusiasts (William Murphy and Eddy Carroll) both founder members of CUGI (Commodore User Group Ireland) established Europe’s first Amiga based bulletin board as a free service available to anyone who was interested. Over the years the BBS which operated under the name Infomatique! became very popular and developed a world wide audience. Since then William has gone on develop expertise in all aspects of communications technology and has also developed an interest in "street photography".